No Second Chances
by Rosette C. H
Summary: Thenardier has ulterior motives for leaving the country. Slash. Yes, I said slash.


Disclaimer: In case you missed it in the summary, this contains **Thenardier slash.** If that hurts your brain, well, it hurts mine, too, but you are responsible for knowing how disturbed you are willing to be and for deciding whether or not to read this. Nothing graphic: I may be twisted, but I'm not a masochist. Other straying from canon, also.

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As Thenardier walked back to the dirty cellar of an inn where Azelma was waiting for him, he did not exactly feel safe, but he did feel safer than he had in recent memory. In the pocket of his coat, he had two tickets for passage to America on a ship that would board in the morning. It was almost funny that Baron Pontmercy had paid him to emigrate, considering that was exactly what he had it in mind to do. America was as good as anywhere else, and perhaps better. Having an entire ocean between himself and France didn't sound like a bad idea just now. He told his daughter that he could make some real money there, for once in his life. Even she seemed suspicious that he was running away from something besides a police force that knew him by sight. Of course, she couldn't know what. His wife hadn't even known. At times, he thought maybe Eponine had known something, and possibly Montparnasse, fed up with the girl for giving herself airs, had put her back in her place by telling her exactly what her father was. Other than that, it was a secret of Patron-Minette, which the central members and closest of associates knew but which nobody mentioned, barely even Thenardier or Claquesous themselves.

There was a rumor that Claquesous had been killed at the same barricade as Eponine and Gavroche. Some police informant had been killed there, to be sure, but not him. Maybe he had dropped out of the sight of the police and the underworld alike, but he had made himself known to Thenardier, and that was inspiring this trip to America. It had been the death of the Thenardieress that upset the balance. There was nothing precise, not yet, but this was Claquesous, and there was never anything precise. The most tangible reason to worry was only a passing comment that now, he had Thenardier all to himself. In prison, perhaps, it was occasionally safer for a weasel-like little man like Thenardier to be able to claim the protection somebody so universally feared, but in ordinary life? The devil in Claquesous was not necessarily a bad thing, but it made the idea that he would want to place any sort of claim on him beyond unsettling. In addition to that, he had broken the unspoken rule to leave such things unmentioned. A few disturbing signs from a man who could easily kill Thenardier if he could catch him was enough to send him running. Tomorrow morning, he would be safe on board a ship, sailing to a country where nobody would know him apart from his daughter. He had his tickets, he had money with him and waiting in New York, and best of all, he would have made a clean get away.

That is, he would have, but a lifetime of one dishonest profession after another betrayed him. Maybe if he had stayed out of the shadows, and lost himself in the at least slightly respectable crowds, he would have made that get away. However, Thenardier habitually hid himself out of the light, and now the person whom he was evading was even more a creature of the darkness than himself. As he stumbled, he thought that he had merely tripped over a loose paving stone, but that thought only lasted until he felt the hand grab the collar of his shirt. He was just beginning to realize what had happened as he was dragged into an alley, and slammed against a wall.

The only light was visible from a distance, behind his attacker, so that, fittingly, he could not see this embodiment of shadow clearly, even at such close quarters. What he could see was the faint spark that was reflected off of a knife, as a rarely used voice quietly growled, "You've made this bad enough by running. Don't try to squirm away, or it will be even messier." Thenardier believed him, and made no attempt to move as the hand pinning him at the chest moved upward, raising his chin with its fingers. His last coherent thought, at the touch of the knife as Claquesous found a vein, was one of terrible humor: who'd have thought that, of all his family, he would be the one to die at the hand of an angered lover?

Of course Claquesous went through the corpse's pockets. Any professional would, and there was no doubt that Thenardier would have done the same to him. Besides the money, all he found of worth was two tickets on a ship to America. It was easy enough to resell one. A man with no identity assumed a spare one, created for somebody else, and did in fact begin a career as a slave trader. No trace of Claquesous ever appeared in Paris again, and the rumor of his death became accepted as fact.


End file.
